The Mark Dacascos Retrospective continues this week, as we discuss the anime/manga adaptation Crying Freeman. In the directorial debut of French director Christophe Gans, Dacascos stars as Yoh, a brainwashed assassin who sheds a tear after every kill. Tasked with killing a young woman who's witnessed his latest contract, Yoh instead falls in love with her, and hopes to evade his enemies as well as those who are controlling him.

For the first time since Clarissa (aka The Adorable Lil' Hypebeast) joined the podcast, your intrepid hosts have finally recorded an episode in person, to kick off 2026 right! We tried to hit up as many Philly cheesesteak spots as we could in the city of Brotherly Love, but we quickly learned our eyes were bigger than our stomachs.

In any event, we're starting the new year by doing a series on the direct-to-video classics of Mister Mark Dacascos, starting with the 1996 film Sabotage; After being severely wounded during a rescue mission gone wrong, former Navy SEAL Mike Bishop finds himself caught in a conspiracy involving arms dealers, the CIA, and the mercenary who shot him during said rescue mission.

We're closing out 2025 with a Netflix original film, as director Guillermo Del Toro brings Mary Shelley's science fiction/horror masterpiece Frankenstein to life like you've never seen it before. Oscar Issac stars as as the titular mad scientist, obsessed with creating life from death, only to succeed and ultimately regret his choices, while Jacob Elordi plays his creation, who wrestles with having no choice but to live seemingly without end and potentially alone.

Covering a movie that surprisingly didn't have a wide release when it came out 20 years ago, we're talking about a movie instrumental in Robert Downey Jr's comeback, and the directorial debut of the screenwriter behind Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. After barging in on a movie audition to escape the police, New York City burglar Harry Lockhart is flown out to LA and paired with a private detective to learn the craft for his role, only to be roped up in a murder mystery while also connecting with an unrequited love from his past. Naturally. . . hilarity ensues as the bullets fly a-fancy free!

Remember when the director of all those Saw sequels directed a dystopian sci-fi/horror nu-metal musical starring Paul Sorvino, Bill Mosley, Sarah Brightman, Giles from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and PARIS HILTON?!?!?

This week, we're talking about Repo! The Genetic Opera, a fitting movie given our current healthcare woes, as the story posits a future where countless citizens suffer from organ failure, and have to get replacement organs from the megacorporation GeneCo on predatory payment plans. And should they even miss one payment . . . they'll send the Repo Man to collect their property violently . . . but with a song!

The week, we're discussing the maybe-controversial Japanese action thriller from 2000, Battle Royale. Based on the novel by Koushun Takami, a group of high school students believing they're on a class trip are instead taken to an evacuated island and forced to engage in a brutal game of survival over a three-day period. Loyalties and friendships are tested as the classmates must fight each other to the death, for the privilege of being the last student standing, or be killed as well.

**TW: This episode features discussion about suicide and sexual assault relating to underage characters .**

You have to hand it to the trailer for War of the Worlds informing audiences of its quality by including the line, "It's worse than you think." We finally got around to discussing one of the most talked about streaming releases of the year, and that talk has not been good, as Ice Cube stars in the latest adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic science fiction tale, as aliens descend upon our planet. Clearly shot during Covid in the style of movies like Searching and Unfriended, this new version of War of the Worlds shows us all the action through computer and mobile phone screens, as Ice Cube's Homeland Security surveillance tech character is on lockdown in his office while extraterrestrial attacks ravage the planet.

Cast aside by Sony Pictures and rescued by Netflix, we're talking about the monster hit that is K-Pop Demon Hunters, bringing together vibrant animation, surprisingly catchy k-pop tunes and . . . a supernatural battle to protect the souls of all mankind from a horde of demons?!?! K-Pop superstars Rumi, Mira, and Zoey split their time between selling out stadiums and taking don't demons when they're faced with a whole new challenge, a rival K-Pop boyband, the secretly demonic Saja Boys, who are looking to beat them on the charts and the battlefield.